Director out at Ports Authority

Tom Bradshaw is out as executive director of the N.C. State Ports Authority, an official confirmed on Monday.

By Adam Wagner - StarNews of Wilmington

Tom Bradshaw is out as executive director of the N.C. State Ports Authority, an official confirmed on Monday.

Ports authority spokeswoman Laura Blair said Bradshaw no longer works for the N.C. Department of Transportation, but provided no other information.

Department of Transportation representatives could not be reached for comment on Monday.

“This is a change in the administration. This is a transition,” Bradshaw said. “You’ve gotta remember. If you go back, I told the governor and the secretary I would give them a year. I came on Jan. 23 and left on Jan. 25.”

But ports board members were caught by surprise when they learned news of Bradshaw’s leaving on Monday.

“I wish I had been consulted with,” said Danny McComas, chairman of the Ports Authority’s board of directors.

Bradshaw was named interim statewide logistics coordinator a year ago at a salary of $150,000.

A former Raleigh mayor from 1971-73 and state transportation secretary from 1977-1981, Bradshaw oversaw operations at the N.C. State Ports Authority and the N.C. Global TransPark.

He was to work closely with Department of Transportation partners on a more strategic approach to transportation assets and the needs of businesses, the DOT said in a news release.

The DOT at the time planned to begin a national search for a permanent logistics coordinator.

Bradshaw said he only pledged to serve a year in the position.

“If you call my wife, she’d tell you I’m two days late coming back,” Bradshaw said. “I’m gonna be 75 years old this year, and my wife asked me if I was ever gonna take her anywhere. I said, ‘Give me a year to go do this, and then I’ll take you somewhere.’”

McComas said Bradshaw had been an effective leader of the ports, turning a profit and investigating new business opportunities.

The chairman also expressed fears that it could be difficult to find a qualified successor for Bradshaw.

“I would like to see stability,” McComas said. “I talk to my friends at the ports to the north and the south and they say, ‘There’s no stability. Why would I even apply for this job?’ It’s too political.”

Bradshaw’s leaving came on the heels of the departure of ports board Vice Chairman Alex McFadyen, who resigned before the board’s regular meeting in Charlotte on Thursday.

McFadyen said he stepped down after meeting with McComas and Tony Tata, the new secretary of transportation, prior to the meeting.

A major factor in McFadyen’s resignation was the fact that the secretary of transportation, not the board of directors, now appoints the executive director of the Ports Authority, a change that came about when the Ports Authority was transferred from the Department of Commerce to the Department of Transportation in 2011.

“What they’re doing is they’re politicizing the executive director of the port, which historically for 75 years the board of directors of the port has hired the executive director, and now the board of directors does not hire the executive director. It’ll be a political appointee, apparently,” McFadyen said.

McFadyen, a former vice president of First Citizens Bank, was appointed to the board of directors in 1999. His term was to expire in 2017.

“In a nutshell is we have a situation where you have an individual (the executive director) who cannot serve two masters at one time,” McComas said. “He serves the secretary of the DOT and he serves the board? That’s not the way the world works.”